


in winterfell,

by 13letters



Series: fare thee well, oh, honey [5]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fare Thee Well, Tormund is my feminist, happiness at the expense of pain, introspective
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 00:30:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18560266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13letters/pseuds/13letters
Summary: Jeyne Poole is dancing with her ghost.





	in winterfell,

**Author's Note:**

> Stop! 
> 
> If you didn't watch last night's episode, go watch it. 
> 
> If you did, then I'm sorry -- this little bit of my heart in words doesn't do it justice, but it's the best sense of an ending that I can manage through the tears. 
> 
> I hope you loves enjoy it. 
> 
> I hope these characters survive. 
> 
> x x o

Jeyne Poole is dancing with her ghost.

Her feet kiss the steps as she waltzes and spins, laughs and plays, dances in a daze that dips and stretches like sunlight over the corridor as it spreads across the windowsills and paints everything bright. Home again, and the heat is dragonfire blooming in their chests, coals in their rib cages, ashes like dirt for freshly sown seeds: _spring_. She can almost taste it, here, "Can't you, Robb?"

But he's left, and he's sitting quietly a room up above, with Bran.

Ned stands by Jon's side, so, so sorry in the crypts.

Cat is standing behind Sansa, weeping.

The rest of the living decide to live tonight.

Brienne kneels before Jaime, and _oh_ , she thinks with startling complexity, with his face golden above her, his sword at her shoulder and his honor at her feet, _this could almost be a wedding_.

Hers, and he could drape his furs around her shoulders. He could answer her truthfully, some variant of _Why are you here?_ met by the greenest eyes she's ever seen and what will be the first pair of lips to ever kiss her as a true knight, a man, her heart in his hands, "Brienne,

I dreamed of you," Arya murmurs, after. "Almost each night."

"Arya," Gendry whispers. He's kissed each inch of her scarred skin and perfectly smooth skin, both. He's called her _love_ , too, quietly amidst each _yes_ that he pulled from her body and pressed into her flesh. He held her hands as he pushed into her, kissed her, and began to shake from the effort of stillness, tenderness, and gentility.

"Are you cold?" she had the audacity to ask him, and instead of kissing his pulse point, she bit his neck. "Gendry, _move_."

With her, he did.

"Arya, after the war," he begins.

Where she's been tracing the planes of his muscles, she stops with her palm flat against his heart. "You'll marry me?"

"Yes."

"You'll fight for me?"

"Yes."

"You'll never leave me," she says, gasping at the pressure of it, sex.

"No," he swears. "I won't."

"I thought I would marry you," Sansa tells Theon. Gruffly, the Hound turns away, walks on. "When I was a silly, little girl. I thought I would marry you."

No one was more surprised than she when she took him into her arms. No one is more surprised than him to see her now, sharing his table. Sharing secrets like they are children once more, playing at chance like fire like lovers like irony.

"Lady Sansa," he begins, and it is Theon, how his voice lowers in conspiracy, how something in his chest deepens, a decade's store of charm and his heart beating flesh. A grin a bit too much like a smirk, like relief, like joy, "Are you asking for my hand?"

"No," she contradicts in that matter-of-fact tone she's grown so accustomed to. "I'd never be so bold."

"You'll marry a kind, gentle lord," her father told her.

Brienne smiles when Jaime turns his back, and she is radiant.

She is the most beautiful woman to have ever lived, in this moment; in this moment, she is a goddess and she is ethereal and she is a knight of summer. She is laughing melodic, happy, chortling laughs, and utterly delighted, Tyrion toasts in her honor, Tormund bows to her, and Podrick holds his hands to his heart.

When Jaime suggests they ought to try to sleep, before, they do -- mostly.

"Thank you," Brienne tells him with her -- with her hand upon his right forearm. With her eyes such a dark blue in the firelight. "Thank you," she repeats, and this is how whole cities have fallen, been rebuilt again, this mountain within his chest that is causing his heart to stutter and stall, her smile. "I can't thank you enough, Jaime."

"No," he tells her. Earlier, he had to wipe the tears from his eyes, and he tried not to think _almost. If only they had more time._ "I can't thank you, my knight."

"M'lady," Gendry sighs into her neck, smiling in a dream-like, sated delirium: happiness, a tone so light-hearted that she smiles, too, for her stupid, stupid boy. "Tell me a dream you had."

"We were dead, Gendry."

Rickon is taller than Jon is where he stands in the crypts, nearly a man. He's taller than Lyanna, too.

In the dark, Ghost whines mournfully. Grey Wind and Lady lick his snout and nuzzle his sides. Shaggy and Summer curl by Bran's chair, and Wyllas stares into the fire.

"I see her," says Davos, because he's walking as he always does before a fight. There is no sleep for him. "Shireen. I see the Princess Shireen."

"It's a haunted night," says Sam. Silent, Edd nodds, and they watch. They wait.

Jeor stands with them, too, beside Jorah. If it weren't so cold, he might swear he felt a hand on his shoulder, the side of his face, _papa_.

"Do you think we've got a chance?" Davos asks them. "Can we survive this?"

"We have to," says Sam, but he fell in love with four brown eyes, and they are waiting for him to come back safe and whole. He kissed Gilly seven times before he left her and his son, "For luck," he said, but she pressed her body against his body.

She said, "For love," and he almost wishes that he were still a coward.

"Sansa," says Theon. When he sets down his cup, relaxes his grip, his knuckles kiss the spine of her palm. "I wouldn't be here without you, Sansa."

"Yes," she says, so imperiously that she is twelve years old and ordering him to saddle her horse, "you would be."

"King," says Dany. Her laugh really isn't. Sorrowfully, Rhaegar looks down, meets Brandon's eye. "No. _No_. I won't let you," she is saying, but then Jon is kissing her.

All wars are the same war. The things we do for love. You Starks are hard to kill. You'd be m'lady. It rhymes with pain. Kill me! I do know some things. Jaime, my name is Jaime. You could be my family. I can still feel the things he did to me. He is a good man. Tarly is my family name. I have a soft spot in my heart for cripples, bastards, and broken things. You couldn't love that beast. Little bird. For the Watch.

The ghosts fade in an instant, all but Jeyne's.


End file.
